Experts
Kathy Acker, writer
Being a woman is to want everything.
We don't have a clue what it is to be male or female, or if there are intermediate genders. Male and female might be fields which overlap into androgyny or different kinds of sexual desires. But because we live in a Western, patriarchal world, we have very little chance of exploring these gender possibilities.
Violet Berlin
... men will take on female identities in order to be privy to female talk.
Violet Berlin is a journalist specialising in consumer technology and interactive entertainment. She writes and presents radio and television programmes, and works as a producer, director and scriptwriter. She runs an independent television production company, Curious Television.
Dr Susan Blackmore
... when confronted with the huge complexity of the modern world, our intuition fails us.
Dr Susan Blackmore is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She teaches courses in parapsychology consciousness and her current research is on near-death experiences, altered states of consciousness, and dreams. After 25 years of research, she is sceptical of paranormal claims.
Dave Clarke
There is a moth which has a proboscis over a foot long.
Dave Clarke is Headkeeper of the Invertebrate Conservation Centre, London Zoo (Zoological Society of London). Born in Hove, Sussex, in 1963, he achieved his ambition of becoming a zookeeper in 1982.Initially working with all types of animals, he became involved in the Insect House in 1984. Working closely with his friend and colleague Paul Pearce-Kelly, the House has become the world's largest breeding centre for threatened invertebrates, carrying out conservation programmes at home and abroad.
Dr Christopher Davis
Obsessive love is often viewed as a sign of mental illness.
Dr Christopher Davis is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is the recipient of many awards, including the University of Chicago unendowed fellowship. She received her Doctorate at the University of Chicago for her dissertation on Illness and Medicine Among the Tabwa of Zaire. She has worked with the Tabwa for many years.
Celia Green
In an out-of-body experience, a person seems to be looking down on their own body from above.
Celia Green is the Research Director at the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford. She won the senior open scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1953 where she read mathematics and theoretical physics. She was recently awarded an Honorary Research Fellowship at Liverpool University.
Dr Mike Harris
Vision is really a controlled hallucination.
Dr Mike Harris is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology, Birmingham University. After working as a professional musician, he studied neurobiology at Sussex University and Psychology at Bristol University. Since 1980, he has taught perception at the University of Birmingham and undertaken research into psychophysical and computational models of human vision.
Dr John Harrison
Often we learn most about the brain when it's performing abnormally.
Dr John Harrison is a Doctor of Psychology and Research Fellow at the Developmental Psychiatry section of Cambridge University. He has a special interest in the behavioural consequences of early brain damage and has done research into synaesthesia, a condition in which people get sensory stimulation in one modality and experience sensation in another.
Nigel Hartley
... each of us have a musical personality.
Nigel Hartley studied piano with Jana Frenklova, Ronald Lumsden and Eleanor Bailie. As a Music Therapist he works at London Lighthouse, a centre for people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, and at the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre, London, where he is involved in the training of students.
Steve Jones
What is the point of males? Females do all the hard work for them.
Steve Jones is Professor of Genetics at University College, London. He was born in Wales in 1945 and educated at Wirral Grammar School and the University of Edinburgh. He has held various visiting posts in the USA, Africa and Australia, and has lectured at UCL since 1978.
Orlan
I do not want to resemble the Mona Lisa.
Orlan is a performance artist who uses her own body and the procedures of plastic surgery to make "carnal art". She is transforming her face, but her aim is not to attain a commonly held standard of beauty. Orlan is the only artist working so radically with her own body, asking questions about the status of the body in society.
Dr David Perrett
There is remarkable agreement across cultures, gender and ages about what makes an attractive face.
Dr David Perrett lectures in visual perception at the University of St Andrews and works in the Perception Laboratory there. He received a BSc from St Andrews in 1976 and a D.Phil from Oxford in 1981. He researches into how we use sight to understand the world. He studies faces for the ways in which they provide clues to their owners' natures and thoughts.
Dr A. C. Robin Skynner
It's much better for people to argue than withdraw ...
Dr A. C. Robin Skynner qualified in medicine at University College, London. As a practising consultant in psychiatry and psychotherapy, he has pioneered group and family techniques of treatment. He is one of the founders of both the Institute of Group Analysis and the Institute of Family Therapy (London), and has applied the ideas developed there to a range of group situations, including companies, schools, hospitals, the social services and the clergy.
The Reverend Tom Selwyn Smith
Make up your quarrels before you go to sleep.
The Reverend Tom Selwyn Smith is a retired priest of the Church of England. Born in 1912, he spent his early years in Toxteth, Liverpool, where his father was a Church of England parish priest. Between them, he and his father have spent over a hundred and ten years preparing marriages. Ordained by the Bishop of Carlisle in 1937, he ministered in Cumbria, Workington and Dalston, moving to London and district during the war, and finally to Box, Wiltshire, where he worked from 1955 to 1992.
Dr Paul Williams
... transcendence is overcoming the three root poisons of greed, hatred and delusion.
Dr Paul Williams is a Reader in Indo-Tibetan Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol. Born in 1950, he studied Indian philosophy at the University of Sussex and took his doctorate in Buddhist philosophy at Oxford University. He currently chairs the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education and has practised Buddhism within the Tibetan tradition for many years.
